[MD] meaning, awareness and understanding

[Platt Holden]

Hi Ham, 

You may be right about an amoeba's inability to value anything, but 
there's another side to the story from philosophers past and present. 
If interested in seeing what others have said about the ubiquity of  
mind, consciousness and/or awareness in the universe, may I suggest you 
take a gander at:

http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10531

I think at least you'll agree that there's a legitimate intellectual 
argument for the presence of mind throughout the cosmos.

Best regards,
Platt
  

[From Ham]

> Scott --
> 
> You said:
> 
> > If the world of an amoeba were fully described in Newtonian
> > mechanistic terms, there would be no value involved in the
> > amoeba's reaction. What the Newtonian leaves out is that in
> > avoiding the acid, there has been a placement of the particular
> > situation within some general context: the amoebic species has
> > cognized that acid is harmful, better move away.
> 
> You MoQers like to borrow terms from Pirsig's novels, make nice sounding
> but false metaphors from them, and then convince yourselves of their
> profound truth.  It drives me up the wall!  As I've said before, the
> amoeba does not -- CAN NOT  -- 'cognize', 'recognize', 'cogitate' or
> 'value' anything. It has no brain or nervous system.  A clinging vine
> does not encircle a drainpipe because it values water.  An electron does
> not jump to a proton because it values a positive charge.  Such
> assertions are pure fiction and have no place in serious philosophy.
> 
> There are forces in the universe, particularly in living organisms, that
> tend toward homeostasis for the survival of the species.  But these
> mechanisms are not values to the organism; the euphemistic use of value
> here is incorrect and misleading.  The proper term for such
> "goal-seeking" behavor on the part of an insentient universe is
> Teleology, and the Jesuit paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin (in his
> "The Phenomenon of Man") and biologist Edmund Sinnott ("Biology of the
> Spirit") argued that evolution began at the inorganic level, geogenesis,
> progressed through the origin of living material, biogenesis, to animal
> behavior, psychogenesis, and finally to the mind of man, noogenesis.
> 
> But if teleology is really value, WHOSE value is it?  An amoeba isn't a
> conscious creature; hence it can't value, based on your previous
> statement that "value implies [presupposes] awareness".  Any value
> attributed to a purposively directed universe must therefore reside
> either in the Creator or in the conscious sensibility of man.
> 
> > A particular encounter with acid, then, is a semiotic
> > event -- this acid invokes the general pattern. This
> > does not mean that an amoeba is in itself employing
> > semiosis. But, I would argue, for the amoeba to
> > follow a static *pattern of value* means that semiosis
> > is being employed. I would venture that instinct is the
> > word we have for this. The alternative to this is that
> > it just moves away "automatically", or deterministically.
> > That, I claim, denies that the pattern of moving away
> >  is a pattern *of value*.
> 
> Kindly explain to me how an amoeba would use semiosis if it could (or
> did). Are you suggesting that an amoeba might be conversant with words
> and symbols?  Also, do you consider a "pattern of value" possible in the
> absence of any conscious apprehension of it?  If so, then you are not
> talking about what I understand as value.
> 
> -- Ham
>